Monsoon Season

I don’t write a whole lot in here anymore. I have no business telling the world what I’m feeling when I can’t figure it out myself. It’s like that feeling you have at the beginning of a new school semester, or year, when the time before you seems unthinkably long and the journey you’ve set yourself on, eternal. Come December, looking back the time seems to have raced by at breakneck speed, even if none of it was particularly good, and even if you can remember, somewhere in the back of your mind, that at the time it seemed to be dragging on at a painstakingly slow pace.

It’s the middle of November. I leave India in less than two weeks, and I don’t know how I feel about that. There are things I’ll miss, certainly, but my confliction runs deeper than that. Am I disappointed? Sad to leave? Or just sad that I didn’t take away from this semester the things I’d hoped I would?

It’s grown cold in Delhi. Not the cold of Northeastern winters that I’ve been bred for – I step outside and think it must be in the low sixties, then head online to check the weather and am told I’m twenty degrees off, that it’s 84 degrees and my body has just adjusted to this climate so well I’m now freezing.

I’ve been exhausted. On a bone-deep level, I am always tired. I grab an extra hour of sleep wherever I can get it; after breakfast in the late mornings, after some work on a paper in the early afternoon. Then I stay up heinously late writing because it’s November and hey, Nano is the one thing that has brought me an extended period of joy for as long as I can remember.

That shouldn’t be as depressing as it sounds. I have a short memory, I know, but it doesn’t change the sensation any less.

There have been so many things, small moments that it never ocurrs to me to write about. The weddings at the private club on the other side of the park, bands playing and people celebrating. An infant’s first birthday party down the end of the block, a parade lined up in front of the house to pay its respects, the lights and music and dancing and singing lasting until late into the night. Chatting with the receptionist in the security area of the President’s house, having spoken to her in Hindi without really thinking and watched her eyes bug out. The ensuing conversation was pleasant, if comical. I felt silly, but I’d impressed her.

Diwali, sitting puja not once but twice, setting candles around the house of my friend’s homestay family. Setting off fireworks with her twelve year-old host sister and praying I could turn and run fast enough to not have them explode in my face. Most of the time I was successful. Sometimes I was not.

The celebrations that night were unprecedented to anything I’ve seen before. It’s not like Christmas, where some houses put up lights, or like July 4th, where some people in some small, contained areas set off fireworks. The lights were everywhere, decked out on every house as if the city were one giant palace in celebration. Children, and us, and adults were setting off fireworks every twenty feet on the sidewalks across the city. They went off with alarming frequency, to your left or right or behind you, some whizzing past your head and flashing with brilliant intensity as they exploded. It had the pronounced catastrophe of a warzone, explosions rocking the block every few seconds, a car alarm going off here or there, small fires starting on the asphalt as different fireworks puttered out of existence slowly, sending smoke curling up to the sky.

Magnificent. And a little scary.

Then there’s been school, which has driven me into the depths of all but the most anti-social behavior. I have my roommate to play our dynamics off of each other, which is nice, and drag each other out on some occassion. I have not gone out at night with the others in what feels like at least a month, but in reality is probably longer.

I feel I’ve become stunted in many ways. These last few months have been cruel, jetting off to Asia with my mother finishing the last two months of her chemo cycle, the horrible failures of this program and the classes so awful they make getting out of bed in the mornings an almost physical pain. The lack of sleep, which makes it even moreso. The consistent invasions of our room, everything from ants to mayflies to lizards and, one time, a mouse. The drama – oh, good Lord, the drama. The bombings, at once terrifying and unreal, and two of them in my own city. And then Zachary, so suddenly and unexpectedly (though was it? truly?) getting taken from us when I was so far away. My parents’ insistence that I not come home for the funeral, but stay and finish the program.

“Stunted” maybe isn’t the right word. “Regressed”, perhaps. I feel like I’ve regressed to a place I haven’t been since high school, or maybe sophomore year. I enjoy my roommate’s presence. He’s the sort of person who can have both of us in stitches within moments of entering the room. He’s every bit as bizarre as I am, though in his own trademarked way. His company is good for me. But the rest of it – some of the kids in this program are pretty okay, and I’ve made friends certainly, but their caliber can never even hope to approach that of the friends I’ve left behind. I have had messages from home, from school, from Washington in my inbox or AIM or on my Facebook almost every day since I’ve been gone. You’d think the enamor would fade for people when you’ve been away for longer and longer each day – over four months now. It hasn’t – and this was even before tragedy struck.

I have holed myself off from much of the “India” experience outside of school. After our last organized trip with our program, I had ideas, a few tentative plans for travel, but I canned them. Most out of necessity – travel warnings for Mumbai, the loss of $500 due to credit card fraud, a deluge of assignments. But when those first notions didn’t work out, I did not seek out alternatives. There are those here who’ve gone away most every weekend, whereas I hit a plateau halfway through the semester of knowing it would be too much, too fast. That kind of lifestyle would exhaust me, the people would be draining, and quite frankly I just didn’t come equipped with the kind of finances on the homefront that some of these kids have.

I’ve stayed in Delhi since October. I’m okay with that now, though I feel like I should feel guilty. But I’ve hit a point where I’d rather go home sooner, come back in five years to see the things I haven’t yet seen, than stay longer and see more. I would have no appreciation for the wonders – and they are, doubtless, wonders.

I miss my friends. They’re the kinds of friends I could never explain to anyone else, and there are more of them than I thought. Brilliant, compassionate, giving, goofy, and people who just Get It, and get me on some fundamental level that I never would have thought possible.

I miss my father. I’ve always taken his presence for granted, and even after moving in with him before going away to school I never felt close enough to really long for his presence. It was only a few months ago that I looked in the mirror, tilted my head, and could say with complete and devastating honesty that I miss my father.

My grandparents will be coming over for Thanksgiving, on the day I get home. Reverse culture shock and them in the same few hours are a lot to handle. I don’t know how I feel about it.

My sister will be flying in for Thanksgiving and for that I’m glad.

I miss school, in a way that strikes me as downright bizarre considering the love/hate relationship I have cultivated with that place over the last four years. There is a professor in particular, young, handsome, brilliant, that I dearly miss though I doubt he notices my absence. I miss late nights out with the boys, dining on half-price wings and pitchers of beer. I miss Thursday nights at the seedy bar, playing pool with sinfully old sticks and drinking fifty-cent beer. I miss beef – my G-d, how I miss burgers and steak and just the sight of grounded red meat. I miss fresh salads and long walks and time at the gym. I miss being busy, but in a certain way. That notion of having my schedule booked from morning to night with interesting things that I feel passionately about. I miss sex. I miss Starbucks.

I will definitely be happy to come home. Of that part I have no doubt. But I still don’t know if I’ll be happy about leaving. I think I’ve worn out my welcome here, but more than that this program has long since worn out its welcome with me. But India – that’s another story. The things that I reviled at first, that I said “I would never come back to live here in my adult life”, are things to which I’ve adjusted. Things that have grown on me, even. I’m already awaiting the next time I can come back, on my own terms, with my own people, and not be tied down by the threat of finals – my first of which is tomorrow – and final papers.

I feel exhausted inside, as if I’m not really capable of a wide range of emotion, alternating only between upbeat and downright silly to – whatever it is I am right now. Stoic. Unmoved. Tired. I wish I had taken away so much more from this semester, in some ways. In others, I wish I’d taken away less.

This has not been the “traditional” experience of a semester abroad, in any way that I can think of.

But then, I guess that’s not what I signed up for.

It is a little after ten o’clock at night. I have just gotten back from a lovely Rosh Hashana dinner hosted by the woman who runs the UN Development Program in Delhi.

I come back, and my roommate – who stays up until all hours and usually makes fun of me for being an invalid – is fast asleep.

I go up to the roof, to enjoy a few minutes of solitude and mental wind-down. And come to think of it, Delhi is dead silent tonight. One would think it were the dead of night on a desserted island, and not late evening in an enormous city.

There is a fantastical ring of red around the night sky, as if the sun hasn’t fully set yet and has no intention of doing so. Sunset was scheduled for over four hours ago, and the deepest shades of night sky are a surreal purple, rather than black. The pink tint is vibrant, and completely unexpected.

Tonight feels like magic. Also, like I have stumbled through a six-hour timewarp upon entering my house, and that it is closer to sunrise than it is to sunset.

In any case, I embrace the invitation to turn in early and cash in on some precious, much needed sleep of my own.

If you haven’t heard by now, 5 bombs went off in Delhi last night. I left Delhi yesterday morning for our 3-day weekend in Khajuraho – if I hadn’t I would have been in the heart of hearts of the blast locations. Three were in areas I spend most of my free time in, and one was less than 10 minutes from my house.

Everyone I know is fine, but I couldn’t get internet last night and had trouble dialing out to my parents, the phone lines were tied up quite a bit.

I can’t explain what I am feeling right now.

This is far, far too close to home.

There are, at least for me, a number of stages I have to go through when I travel. It takes me a substantial length of time in order to arrive at the conclusion that I have, in fact, arrived where I told everyone I would be. On short vacations, this has the effect of sucking all the fun away. When you’re in Italy for eight days you then spend the entirety of your time denying the fact that you’re actually in Italy. Forget the nude sculptures and the young fashionistas and the people speaking Italian everywhere. You could just as easily be in Little Italy for what you’re spending on dinner.

The first month I spent in India, the twelve of us students would break prolonged periods of silence, or drawn-out moments of profundity, with a startling assertion.

“Guess what?” one of us would whisper conspiratorially. (This was usually me.)

“What?” the others would ask, an edge of genuine curiosity tinting their voices.

“We’re in India!” Sometimes they’d laugh, or smile politley. Mostly they just rolled their eyes. But it was a gag that failed to grow old because it was taking an eternally long time to strike any of us, to really strike us, that we were here.

The evidence was overwhelming, of course. There are no autorickshaws in New York, and you can’t do half the things people here do in public in Washington. You’d get fined limbs if you left your dog’s waste piled on the sidewalk or grass or asphalt like that in Pennsylvania – or if you lifted up your pants and, ah, left it yourself. The whole game was different. The first real rule about Delhi is that this is a city that has never, ever played by the rules.

The shock wore off, eventually; I’ve been here for two and a half months now and there are days when I feel it, days when I navigate the city effortlessly because I know where I am and I know exactly what to expect. I speak the way they speak, I wear the clothes they wear, and I give the beggars and street vendors the same disdainful looks that the natives give, like someone disappointedly evaluating a sewage spill, or the food that’s gone bad in the back of the freezer.

There has been only one thing, though, that helped me skip those first few steps to acceptance from the moment I got here. And that thing is – wait for it – laundry. Rather traditionally, we lack either a washing machine or dryer here in the residence. There is also a distinct lack of large rocks, which immediately crushed my dreams of filming my life as a Bollywood story with a big musical number taking place beating laundry down by the Ganges, me spinning around and belting out Hindi in a colorful kurta while my loyal crew of backup dances in unison behind me.

What we do have is a bucket. Sometimes, if I borrow from the girls upstairs, I have two buckets. My roommate and I scoured through town one day and bought a bag of detergent. And so when I have put off the painful but inevitable task of laundry for as long as I possibly can, I man up, roll my sleeves up, and turn the faucet for the bathwater on. One bucket of cold water with the detergent mixed in, one bucket of warm. Soak for an hour, hour and a half maybe, rinse in the warmer water. Feel my hands pruning from the moisture, the detergent irritating my skin like a dozen ants crawling through my fingers. Try not to scratch. Usually wind up slipping and landing facefirst into a bucket of soapy, dye-colored water.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

At the end of this feat I haul the bucket up and make my way to the roof. Sources are unable to confirm, but I may have tried, once or twice, to carry the very heavy and dripping wet bucket on my head. If this indeed happened, it probably didn’t go so well. That would at least explain why I don’t carry the bucket on my head anymore.

By the time I get to the roof it is usually night. This is not because we have an endless series of stairs but rather because, as explained above, I procrastinate for as long as possible (and longer than is feasible).

The roof at night is peaceful. The air is always exotically thick, like taffy or chewing gum or even that silly putty we used to play with as kids, to flatten against the comics section of the newspaper and try to lift the print of colored ink onto the doughy surface. The air’s like that – almost unbreathable. Hardly better than it is at midday. Sometimes I even think it’s worse.

I take my clothing out of the bucket, lifting one piece at a time cautiously, between thumb and forefinger. I let the water rain down off the cloth, then squeeze up and down the garment with one hand, sending more brown water cascading over my arm and onto the flat cement of the roof surface. At this point, the ants that have gathered around my feet in hopes of a nutritious human meal usually begin to scatter in fear. If they don’t, they are swept up in the devastating flood of Noah.

I twist the clothes then. Roll it up like a wet towel you’re preparing to snap someone with. I never question where I am, at this time. There is something about the trees looming so close above me, hedging in on the rooftop, or the size of the bats flying low overhead, or the proximity of the moon. There is no question that I am in India. It is not a countryside, or a bird’s-eye view, or a version of laundry that you would ever mistake for Minnesota, or New Jersey. Wringing the wet cloth out so hard your bad hand starts to ache – that’s India.

Sweating on the rooftop at a time of night so late even the dogs have stopped howling and hunkered down for the evening. Listening to the birds and bats and sounds of traffic, always traffic, blaring off in the distance and knowing with every fiber of your being that you are a long, long way from home. This is what has centered me. Swept me along for the ride. Doing laundry has convinced me faster than the life-threatening traffic or stomach infections or cows strolling casually down the sidewalks that I am exactly where I have promised everyone I would be.

India.

Step five.

In case no one has every told you this: the Taj Mahal is big. Like, really big. According to the new list that was voted upon by some amorphous and vaguely official body last year, it is also officially now one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Which means I’ve seen two so far¹.

Our program escorted the entire group around this past weekend, three days between Agra and Jaipur. The most important thing you need to know is that it was hot. Insanely hot. Mind-blowingly hot. Unimaginably, ineffably hot. Nancy-Reagan-dropping-an-egg-into-a-frying-pan hot. There was also far too much activity packed into far too little a span of time, so between the exhaustion, the heat stroke, and the long bus rides, our crowd coming back into Delhi was ready to kiss the dirty dirty ground we walked on.

Jaipur was overstated. It was the place I’d been the most excited to visit, having read about it in the news for ages. We missed Pearl Market, and the markets and stores we did hit were not particularly worth the time. The Ambar Fort was nice; the elephant ride to the top was awe-inspiring. Also, being wined and dined in 5-star hotels for three days was pretty nice.

On the 13th of this month, we are going on a group trip to Kojuraho for three days. I’ll return to Delhi for a night, and then fly to Kathmandu with two of the girls to spend the six days of our fall vacation.

That’s right, I’ll be in Nepal for a week for my fall vacation. How cool is that?!

Other things of note include (but are not limited to):

Last week I met up with Bhavna, my father’s coworker’s niece, for dinner last Thursday. She is exceptionally cool, brilliant – has been a lawyer for 10 years and is currently taking an extended sabbatical from work – and great fun.

Electronics seem to hate me. I lost my power adapter (have been stealing my roomate’s when necessary), got my cell phone stolen in Kashmir, and the new charger for the new phone has decided to not work, leaving me with dead!phoney goodness.

And lastly, for no particular reason besides that I spend way too much time in class, and most of my classes completely suck, I have been bored to tears lately and felt like I don’t have enough time to myself. This has led to my mind wandering 24/7 and me being totally unfocused. I went through a two week period where I was incredibly prolific – in creative writing if not in blogs – and that seems to have run its course for the time being because now I feel more unfocused than inspired.

Hopefully the weather will cool off soon. That would be a great help to getting my feng shui back into gear.

Also, pictures!

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I am walking down the streets of Nizamuddin, a neighborhood in Southern Delhi, in a navy blue rain jacket. I am praising myself for having had the foresight to buy said rain jacket. I am slopping along through the puddles of filthy rainwater, and piles of mud and shit – some of it animal, some not – to find a ride home in shorts and thong sandals. The sensation is an unpleasant one.

There is a brief pause between the monsoon storms as I hail autorickshaws from the side of the rode. They pull over cheerfully enough, all bright yellows and earthy greens. With their small size and arched roofs, I think of them as Volkswagons without doors. I have less favorable thoughts about their drivers.

One of them pokes his head out at me inquiringly. “Neeti Bagh,” I say. “Challengue?” Will you go?

Many have refused me outright already. It is too far, or too far from good business, or they don’t feel like heading in that direction this morning. Their reasons are endless, each of them mystifying to me. A New York cab has never turned me down.

Some try to cheat me by fifteen or twenty rupees. Some days I wouldn’t care, but today, with hours to spare and feeling defiant of the rain, rather than browbeaten by it, I am determined.

Many try to charge me horribly overinflated prices, three times what a local would pay, and what I have paid in the past. I wait to see which fate awaits me now.

“Neeti Bagh,” the driver repeats, stroking his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “One hundred thirty rupees.”

A hundred and thirty rupees. Fucking autowallahs, I think. What I say is a measuredly more polite take on, I’m not a tourist, stop fucking with me. The Hindi sounds awkward in my mouth, softer on my tongue than I mean it to be, not yet familiar, I am not yet intuitive with my conjugations and intonations and a dozen other things. He gets the message anyway, and drives off with an angry shout.

I have been doing this for twenty minutes.

It will take another ten before a man I had haggled with and refused previously catches me walking by again, nodding finally and holding up four fingers. Forty rupees – the meter price.

I breathe a sigh, air mixed with frustration and relief. “Hanji,” I say, and hop into the back.

It is five kilometers to August Kranti Marg, the highway off of which I live. But on these days after classes when I am on my own, and tired, and wet, and determined – on these days, the road home always seems longer.

Pretty close to the top of the list of “Things You Don’t Want To Hear From The Doctor” when you’re in the middle of Kashmir with no phone service (cell or landline) and have a gazillion medicinal allergies:

“Yes, sure, you have altitude sickness. You also have a stomach infection.”

Fever is broken. Feel much more like a human being than I did yesterday, fatigued, aching, fevered, and with horrible stomach pains. Still haven’t had an appetite in three days, and am on an antiobiotic I have never taken before and don’t know if I’ll have a reaction to.

But you gotta do what you gotta do.

In two hours, I am leaving for a week-long vacation in this town in Kashmir.

Clearly, I – and the four individuals who will be accompanying me – are insane.